InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "SHIA SURPRISE!"

Alexander Hamilton (unimpeachable) wrote in spinningcompass,
@ 2022-03-07 20:26:00

Entry tags:

alexander hamilton, ~liberty becket

Who? Alexander & Liberty
Where? Medbay
When? Monday afternoon
What? A visitor outstaying her welcome ;)
Open? To medical people, but ask first

The weekend had been hell, there was no getting around that fact. The malaria, as they called it, was awful enough, but then on top of that he'd had to quickly adapt to all of the medical advancements and invasive treatments. The noise, the lights, the wires and tubes, consenting in desperation to a female doctor doing whatever she deemed necessary to get him stable. He had no doubt that Dr Cuddy was more than competent, but it was a culture shock on top of a frightening illness.

He'd been so pleased when he found he had visitors. Liberty, and Crawley, although he hadn't really been lucid enough so far to offer them more than the odd mumbled phrase of gratitude before falling asleep again. He was aware of Liberty's continued presence, though, to the extent that now when he woke to find the seat by him empty there was a slight disappointment. He'd missed her. He'd always see that she had been - a book would be left, or a note - but he'd missed her.

Sleep was strange. He felt like he was living years of his life at home, in the wrong order sometimes, bits would be repeated over and over, some he'd just get glimpses of, but he felt very strongly that these were real memories, not hallucinations. It was impossible to explain.

"...needs amendments...defend the constitution... treasury... Jefferson?"

A few seconds of silence, and the world shifted back to the station medbay, lights too bright, the steady beep that apparently meant his heart was still beating, the subtle tug of wires and tubes when he moved, and... he hadn't missed her this time.

"Hey. You're back," he observed, as casually as if she'd popped round for a coffee one afternoon.

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libertybecket
2022-03-08 07:01 pm UTC (link)

'I am. So are you,' said Liberty quietly. She sat on a chair by his bedside. For all the talk of short visits, Liberty had endeavoured to spend as much time with Alexander as she possibly could. She'd never been one for following rules that weren't good and logical. If her presence had upset or agitated him, she'd have left at once. But it hadn't. He'd been calmer, and that meant she wasn't going anywhere. She'd give way to the doctors, and to Rawdon Crawley when he arrived, but otherwise she stayed, when she could.

She worried for Alexander, and what Liberty did with feelings she didn't like was to push them away and occupy herself. On Rica, that meant repairing machinery, building things, getting her hands dirty. But the station didn't need that, and she didn't want to leave Alexander, so what did she do? She worked on the beginnings of her Station Charter. She tried to write with Alexander's quill, a note for one of his bewilderingly old-Earth friends, and had to retreat from the medbay with ink all over her hands.

It was strange that he'd come to matter to her so quickly, but he had a brilliant mind, and he talked to her seriously, and he cared about things the way Ricans did. Liberty thought she had been glad to escape that intensity at first, but it hadn't been long before she missed it. She'd leapt at the chance to help with the meetings, and now there they were every day in that little office. Or they had been, until this. The medical equipment unnerved Liberty too, because it wasn't Rican, but she liked and trusted Dr Cuddy, whom she had been seeing about her baby, and she was perfectly capable of advocating for herself. Or for Alexander, it seemed.

Suddenly self-conscious in a way she hadn't been before, she removed her hand, still adorned with those old inkstains, from where it lay atop one of his. The contact had seemed to calm him, but now he was awake and lucid it felt too much. He was a friend, and a friend she hadn't known very long.

'You were with Jefferson again, I think' she told him lightly. Liberty assumed that his murmurings were all fever dreams, people from his old life.

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unimpeachable
2022-03-08 10:46 pm UTC (link)

"Yeah, looks like it," he said with a small smile.

Alexander hadn't really noticed the hand on his until it was removed and he felt the absence of it. There was a small part of him that wanted to reach and grab it back, but it seemed overly needy when he knew he was just sick and clinging to comforts. She was right there, he didn't need his hand held, it was fine.

At the mention of Jefferson he gave a soft chuckle that gave way to a painful cough, but it passed quickly enough.

"It's the strangest thing," he said, once he had his breath back again. "It feels so real, it's things that haven't happened yet, but they feel like a memory when I wake up again," he frowned, knowing it sounded strange. "Probably just loopy on drugs," he conceded, although he wasn't sure that he believed that entirely. His son's smile was real, wasn't it?

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libertybecket
2022-03-09 09:51 am UTC (link)

Startled by that cough, Liberty leant forward, ready to pass him a bowl if he needed it, or water to sip, but then it passed, and she could relax again. She had never dealt with real illness before, nothing so severe as this, but it was surprising how quickly you could adjust to things.

'Hannah was here earlier,' she told him. While Liberty herself was very much in favour of all the drugs the station could offer, she knew that Alexander didn't feel quite the same way. Some were unavoidable, in his condition, but she thought he'd prefer to have the healer help with his pain, as she had when he had first been taken ill. 'She told me to tell you to rest, but it isn't like you have much choice about that, is it?' Liberty added with a tilt of her head. She could only imagine how frustrating it all was for someone as ordinarily active as Alexander.

'It could be the drugs, still. They had to give you more.' Liberty wasn't about to lie to him, that wasn't how she did things. 'I wrote the details down. Fevers can make you dream strange things too, I read that. Very vividly. Maybe that makes them seem like memories. Were they good dreams?'

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unimpeachable
2022-03-09 08:20 pm UTC (link)

"I thought so," he responded when Liberty mentioned Hannah. The relief she gave to the symptoms was different from the medication. It felt deeper, calmer, like a massage for aching muscles that lasted long after she was gone. "No, and that Sophia is small but surprisingly strong," he joked a little. He knew he hadn't started off as the best patient, but they did seem to understand that he was just frightened.

And he hated this. Being hooked up to all sorts, unable to push past it and just get up. It would have been worse at home, he knew that, he'd dreamed about that, but it didn't stop it being frustrating. With a considerable amount of effort, he used his elbows to push himself up a bit more. It felt more natural to sit up, not that he thought for a second that Liberty cared about what was proper at this precise moment in time.

"Thank you," he said about her taking a note, once he'd got himself sorted. It was reassuring, that there was someone who was in a fit state of mind, taking note of these things on his behalf. "A mixture. Mostly good, I think. I went back to New York, and finished up at college to become a lawyer..." he frowned a little, because it was such a long and mostly mundane process, why had he dreamt that? "I... saw my son. Which is impossible, but I saw him," he told her, unable to stop himself from smiling with delight, even though he knew logically it wasn't possible. The feeling was real, the pride was real.

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libertybecket
2022-03-09 10:04 pm UTC (link)

If he'd asked her, Liberty would have said that of course it didn't matter whether he was lying or sitting or anything in-between. It didn't, not in any important way, but she did find it encouraging that he was propping himself up that way. She doubted that he'd have had the strength for even that, at certain points over the weekend.

She listened carefully to these strange dreams of his. Liberty was a practical young woman who didn't set much stock in dreams, or any kind of mysticism for that matter. Some of the others on the station irritated her, because she was sure there was a rational explanation for everything there. It was understandable not to know what it was, but not to revel in your ignorance or declare that there was no point in even trying to find out the answers. Here, the simplest explanation seemed to hold. Alexander was very ill, and his mind was comforting him with the things he'd like to see.

'It's not impossible for you to dream of your son, and what he might be like,' she told him. I dream of mine, she almost added, but that was different, because of what Bruno had shown her, and so she held back, but her hand did come to rest on the slight curve of her belly. 'It's good. It's good that you dream of hopeful things.' She smiled back at him, because his pleasure at the thought was infectious. 'And a lawyer – that's what you call a mediator of contracts, isn't it? No-' she shifted a little in her seat, '-the advocate for one side in a contract dispute? You'd be good at that. At either. Is that what you're planning to do when you go back?'

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unimpeachable
2022-03-09 11:06 pm UTC (link)

"Yeah, I suppose it's normal. And it does give me a great deal of comfort," he nodded. It was a wonderful thing to experience, whether it was a dream or something more. "We called him Philip. It's my father-in-laws name, so... and I see him smiling, and..." Alexander trailed off with a smile of his own, that he could see mirrored in Liberty's expression. It was nice, sharing a moment of happiness in this depressing little room. "Hopeful, yeah. That's what it is. Maybe my brain is just reminding me why I've got to fight to stay alive."

He gave a small yawn, and lifted a hand to cover it and then rub his eyes for a moment. It was a restful sort of sleepiness, since Hannah had visited, not the horrible gnawing feeling of exhaustion.

Alexander had never heard a lawyer described quite exactly like that, but he supposed it was accurate enough. "Yes, something like that. It was criminal law, mostly, more than contracts. One person takes prosecution, the other takes defence... I really was good at it, but I'm hardly going to dream about being a bad one," he admitted. Maybe some people would, but not Alexander Hamilton. If he was going to be a lawyer, he was going to be brilliant at it.

"I guess so. I'd only stopped studying because of the war, but if we've won then... I go back to New York and finish the exams, if my fever dreams are to be believed."

He was talking a lot more than he had since Friday, or at least a lot more that was actually coherent, which was positive. He knew he had to be careful not to exhaust himself though. A short burst would be fine, wouldn't it? It was good to be talking to her, and not just mumbling and moaning in pain.

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libertybecket
2022-03-10 01:15 pm UTC (link)

His description of the son he’d seen warned her heart, but when Alexander mentioned that he was fighting for his life, Liberty felt a strange, unfamiliar tightness in her chest. It was true. He still was, even if he looked a little stronger now. Something within her wanted to reach out and grab his hand again, but she pushed that thought back. ‘You,’ she said, the word heavy as if she had to force it out, ‘have lots of reasons to stay alive, Alexander Hamilton. Your son is one of them. Don’t go anywhere, okay?’

She let him talk, despite his tiredness, because she thought it was good for him to talk. It was a sign of improvement, wasn’t it? He seemed to know what was a dream and what wasn’t, not like that first day when she’d been searching the telephone records to find people to write to who didn’t seem to be here at all. Far too much time wasted searching for the elusive Citizen Burr to inform him of Alexander’s condition, once she was done writing to the English men. If Alexander’s seeming friendship with the two men who had once tried to kill him confused her, she didn’t say anything about it.

Ordinarily when they talked, she’d challenge him, push him a little, or at least ask for clarifications, but that seemed like additional stress he didn’t need today. She didn’t tell him, then, that it was really all contracts at the bottom, that crime was nothing but a breach of contract. Save that thought for another day. She leant forward, an amused smile on her lips. ‘No, who wants to dream about being a bad lawyer? What a waste of a dream! Which were you, the prosecution or the defence?’

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unimpeachable
2022-03-10 05:42 pm UTC (link)

Alexander caught the look on her face, and it took him by surprise. No, he didn't think she'd want him to die, but there was a frantic urgency about her suddenly that was unexpected. Her sincerity felt heavy, and so instead of a jokey answer she got a more serious nod of confirmation. "I'm not going anywhere," he assured her, then realised what he was saying, promising to stick around on this space station instead of giving into the fantasy life inside his head. That wasn't what he meant, was it? "I've survived worse."

He turned to smile back at her, gladdened by the easy, conversational tone they could slip into despite the very strange circumstances. "Gotta dream big," he joked a little. He had been dreaming big since he'd been a child.

"Defense," he answered simply, seeming as though he was about to leave it there, but he'd been going over and over this case for months - no, he hadn't, but it felt like it. "There was a murder trial. There was 22 year old woman, Elma Sands..." he started, and then realised he probably should explain exactly what had happened to her to his 19 year old female secretary. "She was... found dead, and I was representing the main suspect, this guy Levi Weeks. He'd been in a relationship with Elma, but it was... not a match her family would've approved of, so it had all been very secretive. She told her cousin she was going to elope with him that night, left the house, next thing she was found dead. So, of course, your man Levi is looking pretty guilty here... but I don't know, I don't think he did it, you just get a feeling about someone, you know? It was all media sensation, her family just stirred up all this press against him so everyone was looking in the wrong direction. Things like he was acting weird after she turned up dead, as if you're expected to behave normally if your secret lover is murdered the night of your elopement..."

He sighed, exhausted by his own long-winded story, and also realising that his entire defense was far too graphic and he didn't want to start talking about coroner's reports and gruesome details like that. "I should write fiction novels, who knows where all this came from."

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libertybecket
2022-03-11 10:05 pm UTC (link)

He wasn't going anywhere. Liberty knew, of course, that Alexander's recovery wasn't entirely within his own power, but mental attitude counted for a lot, didn't it? If he thought that he was dying, it was more likely that he really would die. She didn't say much more, not trusting herself not to become sentimental in a way she'd regret later, but gave him an emphatic nod and said simply, 'Good,' in that same earnestly sincere tone.

The story he told then was an unusual one, but it was compelling, and Liberty tried to follow as best she could. He told it well, for a man as ill as he was, and although some of the details were lost on her, due to the absence of context, she understood well enough. It was possibly the most detailed dream she'd ever heard!

'There has never been a murder on Rica,' she told him. 'It must have been frightening for you, dreaming about something as bad as that! More exciting than dreaming of resolving a property dispute, but still.' Liberty shook her head. 'I don't know where it came from, but did your dream show you how it ended? Did you prove Levi's innocence?' She spoke animatedly, more invested than she should have been in the outcome of a trial from a dream.

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unimpeachable
2022-03-11 10:58 pm UTC (link)

"What?" he gave her a look of surprise when she mentioned the lack of murder, but then he figured it out. The colony of Rica was only a few months older than the woman beside him, and she had mentioned that she was the only one of her generation. The rest of the citizens born there were scarcely old enough to think about murdering anyone. "Oh, sure. Huh. I never thought. Hopefully it stays that way for a while yet. New York is incredible, but... it has it's darker side."

Alexander lightly shook his head. He hadn't found the dream frightening in the slightest. Disturbing at times, frustrating, he'd found himself trembling with anger at a particular witness on a few occasions, but he hadn't been frightened. But that she'd gone straight to frightening made him worry for a moment that he'd scared her, talking away about a poor woman strangled to death... no, he hadn't said strangled, he'd kept that part to himself. That was something.

"Yes, he was acquitted. In the end it took the jury less than five minutes to find him not guilty," he told her, with a certain pride that was... a strange feeling, if it was just a dream.

"The real murderer was a neighbour at her boarding house," he added, with another little yawn. "Richard Croucher. Real evil guy. He fled the country, but... he couldn't run forever," he said sleepily.

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libertybecket
2022-03-12 06:54 pm UTC (link)

To Liberty, the very idea that you could be minding your own business and then be murdered was frightening, whether a lover or a neighbour was the culprit. There were disputes on Rica, and occasional fights, but unexpectedly taking someone's life went so far beyond that. It was a marvel to her that he wasn't more frightened, living in New York, but Liberty had been on the station long enough to learn that everyone had a slightly different version of normal.

'Then you were a very good lawyer, in this dream of yours,' she said to Alexander, looking a little more proud of him than was rightly merited by an account of something that his dream-self had done. 'Proved a man's innocence, and found the real culprit. I can't imagine how a murder could be resolved. The amount of mediation that would need. If it were real, he'd be paying back her family for the rest of his life.'

Even that didn't seen satisfactory, and Liberty pressed her lips together, thinking carefully. 'Hopefully Rica will never see anything like that. We disagree on a lot, but not the core values.' Ordinarily, Liberty would have drawn Alexander into a discussion of value-sets and social norms, but he was looking tired, and she hesitated.

'Do you want to rest?' she asked him, lowering her voice. 'I'll have to fight to stay again if they think I'm tiring you out.'

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unimpeachable
2022-03-12 07:25 pm UTC (link)

"Yes, I'd practically perfected it," he smiled, seeing in her expression that she was as invested in this (possibly imaginary) life as he was. What she said next caught him off guard though. Of course, if she hadn't known of any real life murders on Rica, she wouldn't have known what the punishment was, but the idea that you could... pay someone back for a murdered family member seemed outrageous to Alexander.

"Pay them back? No, he was hanged," he told her. Even women in his time knew that, it wasn't something he would have hidden from his own wife. If anything, it had reassured Eliza to know that the maniac wasn't on the loose, with a good memory of what her husband looked like and where he worked. "That's why it is so vitally important that the right man is sentenced. It's life or death."

He gave a resigned sigh at her question. "No," he answered honestly, because he never wanted to rest. "But my body disagrees with me." He really didn't want her to go, but it wasn't going to be exactly great fun for her just to sit there if he fell asleep again. "Why don't you talk instead. Tell me something I don't know yet. About your home, or your family... anything."

Usually he would have a more direct question for her, but it was beyond him at the moment. And frankly, he didn't mind if she just listed place names or read from an instruction manual, as long as she was there.

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libertybecket
2022-03-12 08:31 pm UTC (link)

'Hanged? With a rope?' Liberty's eyes widened in shock. One murder was bad enough, but following it with another? She shook her head. Alexander might have perfected his legal career in his dream, but the law that he'd dreamt up seemed very far from perfection.

'What an awful thing to imagine! I hope you weren't the one to kill him.' It was just a dream, she reminded herself. Alexander could murder hundreds in a dream and it wouldn't make him actually guilty of anything. He was talking about it so seriously, though, that it was hard not to be drawn in and do the same. She shook her head. 'I liked the other part of the dream better. Where you save the innocent people.'

What could she tell him about home that he didn't already know? Over the course of their discussions, she'd told him plenty about Rican politics, about how their meetings worked, and why the first generation had left Earth. What else? She thought for a moment, and then smiled. 'I never did tell you how I got the vote, did I? I'd been attending meetings since I was too young to know what was happening, but I got to be ten, and decided it wasn't right that everyone but me got to vote. I didn't count the babies, because you couldn't talk to them about it. So I asked, and you know what they said, don't you? No, Liberty, you're a child. But I'd been in meetings since forever and I knew that wasn't a good reason. I told them it was the same as people back on corrupt Earth saying someone had no vote just because they were female or had a bad government score or something.'

She spoke quickly, and paused only briefly for breath. 'And I got up in meeting and made my case, and I said that we had two kinds of votes. The first kind was whether something broke Charter, and I could recite the whole Charter back to front by then, I knew what broke it. The second was on resource allocation, and I said that claiming my mother could speak for me on that was faulty logic because I had my own set of interests, separate from hers, and by that time I worked on machine repairs that actually contributed to the colony and weren't just made for teaching me, and if I contributed why shouldn't I have my say? And-' she couldn't help a little grin here, at the memory, 'that's how I got my voting right.'

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unimpeachable
2022-03-12 10:47 pm UTC (link)

"Yes, with a rope," Alexander confirmed, not wanting to lie to her despite how much the information had surprised her. He didn't consider it particularly cruel or unusual given the hideous crimes he knew the man to have committed.

"Me? No, no, there is a state executioner," he tried to explain. It all probably sounded loopy out of context. She had as little idea what 18th Century New York was like as he had about life on Rica, really. "Sure. I liked that part better, too," he told her gently. Of course, no woman was going to relish the details of a public execution, was she? It was highly unlikely. They usually fainted, no matter how strong their constitution.

As Liberty started to speak, Alexander allowed himself to rest. He was listening to every word she said, but his eyes did close for a moment so she might have thought that he was sleeping. If she did, it didn't stop her from telling her story, and he was grateful for that. He was still frightened, anytime he woke to silence except for the machinery. If he could hear Liberty talking, everything was fine.

If he had been in better health, he might've poked her on the topic of "corrupt Earth" and the vote, but it was the sort of chat that was better saved for when they had a good, long, empty evening ahead of them over a bottle of wine. For now, he just smiled, a smile that grew as she went on.

"Ha. You're just incredible, Liberty," he told her without opening his eyes. "Will you stay awhile?" he asked softly.

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libertybecket
2022-03-13 10:58 am UTC (link)

If the thought of one man being hanged had disturbed Liberty, the notion that it was a regular enough occurrence that there could be someone employed for the express purpose of carrying out the killings seemed absolutely appalling. It was different for Alexander, she tried to tell herself. He came from a time of war – something else unknown on Rica, a colony young enough to stay ethically pristine – and he had probably seen so many awful things already that none of this bothered him. It wasn't his fault. Liberty knew that if she'd been from Cardea, not Rica, she'd have fought in Breakaway, because you had to, because Earth had killed Stanley Lorentzen as sure as if they'd put a bullet through him. She was just lucky, she'd been on the slow ship and slept the war away.

She couldn't judge Alexander – and even if she could have, now wasn't the time. He was too ill for a heated debate.

She told her story, and when he called her incredible she felt a tremendous sense of pride, even if it might have only been half-asleep mumblings. 'I'll stay,' she told him, mirroring his quiet tone. 'I'll stay just as long as I can.'

'Let me tell you another story,' she went on, and while the last had been told with the drama it deserved, this one was softer, her voice taking on an almost lyrical quality. 'I told you before that we only live on a small part of Rica. We have the landing site, and the town, and everyone who wants it has their own plot of land, all spread out, and there's more besides. But most of Rica is out there, out beyond the habitable zone, and even if we put all our resources into expanding, it'd take more than my lifetime to cover a fraction of it. Out there, you can walk and walk and it's nothing but orange dirt, as far as you can see. Orange dirt and the glow of the sun and the moons. I used to go out, after I got mad at someone, or at myself, and I'd think maybe I was the first person ever to walk on that bit of ground, and what that meant. How alone we were, and how we weren't, because there were people out there on other colonies, far beyond our reach, and if they looked up in full dark they could see the same stars too. I'd walk until my oxygen tank started beeping at me-' there was at least one tale of a narrow escape, but Liberty didn't think it was the right time, '-and then I'd turn and head back, and mostly then it seemed like all was right with the universe. So when we had to take a shuttle out, much further than anyone had ever been, looking for metal deposits, you know I had to be one of the people to go.'

Sometime between the beginning of the story at this point, Liberty's hand had crept up to hold Alexander's again, because he had asked her to stay, and that seemed to make it alright.

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unimpeachable
2022-03-13 06:43 pm UTC (link)

"Thank you," he whispered with a smile. He felt a great sense of relief washing over him, like he could actually relax in the knowledge that she was going to be right there. He knew that the medical staff would ask her to leave at some point, or she'd need to get a meal or some rest of her own, he didn't expect her to be there for him exclusively. But he would settle for 'as long as I can'.

The next story she told him was beautiful. He felt like her voice was fading in and out, but he could follow the visuals well enough. He could imagine vast landscape, many moons, orange dirt... and her voice...

He felt the little hand in his, and instinctively his fingers curled to hold onto her hand in turn. Previously, he'd been aware of her touch but not reacted in any way. Now, he wanted her to know that he felt it, and appreciated it, and accepted it.

"Mmhmm... am listenin'..." he told her sleepily. He wasn't sure that he would be for long, but for now, he was listening and taking it all in.

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